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Memory training for adults: three methods and one exercise for today

October 9, 2026 · 5 min read

You walk into the living room and can't remember what for. That's not a disease, that's Wednesday. If you want to look after your memory a little, you don't need special equipment or half an hour a day. You need a handful of methods and the willingness to quiz yourself now and then.

Method 1: Retrieve instead of re-reading

If you want to retain something, re-reading is the most comfortable exercise and unfortunately one of the weakest. More effective is to retrieve it from memory: close the book and write down what you still know. That the act of quizzing itself strengthens retention is among the best-established findings in learning research. In a widely cited review of study techniques (Dunlosky et al., 2013), practice testing was one of the two techniques rated highest in usefulness, alongside spreading learning over several days.

In daily life it means: recite your shopping list in your head before you look at the note. Try to list the names from the last meeting. It's uncomfortable when it doesn't work. That discomfort is the part that does the work.

Method 2: Build chunks

Working memory doesn't have many slots. People used to say "seven plus or minus two"; more recent work suggests closer to four units. More important than the exact number is what a unit is: it can be a digit or a whole group you recognise as one. 0 2 2 1 4 7 1 1 is eight digits. 0221 4711 is two blocks, and if you know that 0221 is a city's area code, it's about one.

So when you have to remember something long, stop repeating it. Group it. From carrots, coffee, candles, cheese you make the group "four Cs". From a number sequence you make years or birthdays. The more personal the bridge, the better.

Method 3: The memory palace

The method is over two thousand years old, and it works because people retain places better than lists. You pick a route you know in your sleep: your flat from front door to bed. Then you hang each thing you want to remember on a fixed spot along that route, preferably as a silly, vivid picture.

If you need to remember bread, batteries and basil: a huge loaf lies on the doormat, batteries blink on the shoe rack, a basil bush grows through the sofa cushions. Walk the flat in your head and you meet the three things in the right order.

An exercise for today

Read the following eight words once, slowly. Then cover them, do something else, such as making coffee, and write them down after ten minutes.

Candle, bicycle, lemon, bridge, scissors, cat, cloud, key

Count how many you got. Then try again with another list, this time with the memory palace: put each word at a spot in your home. The gap between the two attempts is usually remarkable, and it has nothing to do with talent, only with method.

What this can't do

These methods make you better at what you practise: remembering lists, keeping names, sorting numbers. Whether the effect carries over to other areas is far less clear, and for promises like "protects against dementia" there is no solid basis. Whoever claims that claims more than anyone knows.

Two things are soberly useful, though. First, memory isn't a muscle, but it is a habit: what you retrieve regularly is easier to reach. Second, you often feel more secure while practising, because you notice the mind still works. That's a modest but real gain.

If you're seriously worried about your memory because something has changed or relatives have noticed, that's a case for a doctor, not for an app.

Why remembering is worth practising at all, we wrote down in The day you stopped having to remember.

One week, one plan

You don't learn methods by reading, but by getting them wrong a few times. To make it concrete, here's a proposal for seven days, five minutes each.

• Monday: Recite your shopping list before you read it. Count how many items you got.
• Tuesday: Put five household items at fixed spots in your home. Walk them again in your head in the evening.
• Wednesday: Remember a phone number in blocks you make up. Retrieve it after an hour.
• Thursday: Write down what you had for lunch yesterday, who you talked to and what you noticed.
• Friday: Repeat Tuesday's spots. How many are still there?
• Saturday: Learn a poem or a song two lines by heart.
• Sunday: Nothing at all. Rest is part of the method, because sleep consolidates what you practised during the day.

Thursday is the oddest and perhaps the most useful. Recalling your own day is the most natural kind of retrieval there is, and it costs nothing. Someone who spends five minutes in the evening reconstructing what happened is incidentally training exactly what we mean by "memory training": bringing things out of your head without anyone handing them to you.

Quick questions

How many things can you hold in mind at once?

Classically it's said to be seven plus or minus two. More recent estimates are closer to four units. How much that is depends on how well you group things into chunks.

Does memory training help against forgetfulness in old age?

Methods improve the practised task. Whether that carries over to daily life or other abilities is uncertain. If you're worried, medical advice is the right route.